Cooling Tower Institute
Latisha Gervase
CTI STD-201 sets forth a program whereby the Cooling Technology Institute will certify that all models of a line of Evaporative Heat Rejection Equipment offered for sale by a specific Manufacturer will perform thermally in accordance with the Manufacturer's published ratings.
By purchasing a CTI Certified model, the owner/operator has the assurance that the tower will perform as specified. Either that model or one within its model line will have been thoroughly tested by a CTI-licensed testing agency and found to perform as claimed by the manufacturer.
Above is a directory of cooling tower models currently certified under STD-201. They are part of product lines offered by far-sighted cooling tower companies that are committed to the manufacture and installation of full-performance towers. In competition with each other, these manufacturers benefit from knowing that they each achieve their published performance capability. They are therefore free to distinguish themselves through design excellence and concern for the owner/operator's operational safety and convenience.
Brandon Rees, Cooling Tower Depot and Jon Bickford Alliant Energy Oustanding Service Award.jpg
Caption: Brandon Rees, Cooling Tower Depot and Jon Bickford, Alliant Energy, receiving the Outstanding Service Award.
Many of the member equipment manufacturers, component suppliers and service suppliers exhibited during the trade show. With floor traffic busy, a few firms had an opportunity to share comments with press - shared here alphabetically.
The Aggreko Cooling Tower Services (ACTS) rental fleet of evaporative, forced draft, counterflow cooling towers are equipped with multiple direct drive fans. ACTS works to help industrial plants recover from cooling tower malfunction, account for sudden variation in demand, and supply flows during planned system projects.
Brentwood Industries displayed its engineered fill media and components for cooling tower applications. Shockwave, its most recent product introduction, is a thermally engineered advancement to standard vertical-fluted fills. An enhanced vertical flute orientation leverages the fouling resistance of vertical-fluted products with the thermal performance of high efficiency fills. Dylan Ziegler, Application Engineer, presented on his paper co-authored by Nina Woicke titled Lab Evaluation of Fill Component Flammability. This topic was the source of several questions and discussions during the Ask-the-Expert Seminar.
Flender Corporation exhibited its helical and bevel-helical gear units for cooling towers. Flender offers customer- and application-specific gear units for dozens of applications. It also displayed the DX500 monitoring solution for industrial gear units, providing owner/operators with remote temperature and vibration measurements, condition and alarm monitoring, data evaluation and diagnostics through the DS Assist mobile application.
Galebreaker Industrial Solutions offers windscreens, CFD modeling, winterization screens, debris filters, plume abatement, recirculation screens and other solutions for air-cooled condensers, cooling towers, heat exchangers and oil rig platforms. Windscreen protection can help reduce mechanical damage, recover thermal deficiency and improve performance of a cooling tower. Galebreaker windscreens stabilize fan pressure, reduce dynamic fan blade loading, increases fan flow rate, reduces recirculation, and more benefits. Its debris filters stop organic and inorganic airborne matter from entering air inlets, prevents clogging of internal heat exchange components and reduce the bacteria populations and the water chemical treating requirements.
Structural Technologies offers evaluation and management of civil and structural infrastructure for industrial and power generation facilities, and offers specialized solutions for repair of cooling towers. Its condition assessment services for cooling towers offers a range of testing to identify root causes of problems and damage levels. Structural Technologies also offers specialty products for repairing and upgrading cooling tower basins, cathodic protection systems to stop corrosion, moisture control, concrete mixes and strengthening systems.
West Texas Cooling Tower Fabrication & Supplies discussed its huge selection of cooling tower equipment, maintenance and rebuild services. Its offering ranges from motors and gearboxes to pultruded fiberglass, nozzels, flow control valves, lumber, hardware and much more. Based in Plainview and Pearland Texas, West Texas Cooling Tower serves international and nationwide customers.
This article will explore the Cooling Technology Institute (CTI) Standard 201 (STD-201) Thermal Certification Program, share perspective from leading cooling tower manufacturers, and cover other existing and evolving CTI test codes, standards and certifications. This article will also emphasize the investment and bandwidth contributed to CTI by cooling tower manufacturers for the benefit of the industry and its end users.
CTI Standard (STD) 201 certifies all models of a line of evaporative heat rejection equipment offered for sale by a specific manufacturer will perform thermally in accordance with their published ratings. STD-201 has two branches. First, STD-201RS is titled Performance Rating of Evaporative Heat Rejection Equipment, and covers testing, ratings and published data requirements. Secondly, STD-201OM is titled Operations Manual for Thermal Performance Certification of Evaporative Heat Rejection Equipment, and monitors compliance with the provisions of STD-201RS. [1]
STD-201RS limits of certifications are outlined in Figure 1. Testing conditions must be set within these given parameters. As shown, limits of certification are different for cooling towers/closed circuit coolers, evaporative condensers and dry coolers.
With over one hundred participating manufacturers in the Cooling Technology Institute, testing and certifying each of the tens of thousands of units coming off the production line is not feasible of course.
In 2018, CTI adopted the test code ATC-105DS for dry coolers. As of March of 2022, STD-201 now includes dry cooler thermal performance in the certification standard, which previously only covered evaporative products.
This year, CTI also launched its Product & Material Certification Program for open and closed-circuit cooling towers. The initial program will certify that fiber-reinforced pultruded (FRP) structural materials for use in cooling towers meet the material properties in Standard 137. STD-137 covers classification, materials, tolerances, defects, workmanship, inspection and the physical, mechanical and design properties of glass FRP structural shapes for use in construction items in cooling tower applications.
Larry Burdick and Nick Mascarenhas also both shared an acceptance test code for adiabatic coolers is also being developed. Other test codes and standards CTI has or is developing include flow, drift emissions, plume abatement, sound and more.
Thermal certification of evaporative heat rejection equipment and dry coolers is helping end users and specifying engineers reduce the water and carbon footprint of their facilities, is preventing false performance claims and is helping improve uptime and reliability.
Suspect that it would be considerably more cost effective from an initial investment and an ongoing operational perspective than a larger portable chiller unit running indoors. Out in hot and sticky NJ, suspect it will be largely worthless in July and August, but that still gives us a very wide operating window (7 months) from March to November.
At best, an evaporative product, be it a cooling tower or a newer item like a closed loop "adiabatic" (think like spraying water from a hose onto a coil), will be able to cool water only to within about 8 degrees of wet bulb temperature during summer or any other time their is high humidity. during summer the wet bulb in NJ is probably 76 degrees, so the best you can get is 84F, impractical for much of anything at a distillery. the other thing you need to be careful of is that the cooling tower water will need to be treated vigorously and strained with a heavy duty strainer to get everything on the cold water loop or you will scale up inside jackets and still condensers, so it would be better to install a intermediate plate exchanger to isolate the process flow from the tower flow.
You're right about winter operation, but even in the mountains up on CT/VT area, a distiller I supplied with a winter glycol cooler, got from Nov to March, like 6 to 6.5 months. You may get about the same, but will still need a chiller like a couple distilleries I supplied such a method to.
I had one guy dig a hole, put in a poly/reinforced cistern. fill with glycol mix and draw it out with a couple pumps, one for process equipment and the other for a dry cooler- worked all winter and so far is able to keep up. He was anticipating adding a small chiller, but so far hasn't contacted me.
Thanks Mike - I hadn't considered one of those dry cooler units, not sure what the cost differential is compared to a standard cooling tower. Small cooling towers (10-20 ton) look to be pretty darn cheap.
Agree it couldn't be the only option, but there has got to be a better way then running the chiller all year round. Not to mention the fact that we've got limited chiller capacity. If investing in a tower vs a larger chiller is more cost effective, reduces operating costs, and improves sustainability, I'm all for it. Just don't know if it's going to live up to that.
My initial thought was to run the condenser/heat exchanger recirculating loop back through the tower before returning to the reservoir. Heck if I could take down the coolant return temperature down to 84f, I could significantly extend the capacity of the reservoir and the ability for the chiller to keep up. The other angle where I thought this could really shine is initial cooling of cereal mashes from 212-150. We're talking about coolant return temps way above wet bulb + offset.
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